The benefits of being religious: a collection of studies and findings

Religious people often take for granted all the benefits that come with such a practice, from a sturdy belief system to a tight knit community. Of course there are many costs too, but in this post, I wanted to share a collection of what I’ve gathered from books, videos, papers, and podcasts that explain the benefits practicing a religion. Here’s a prior post where I shared some useful definitions of religion.

A fairly comprehensive and concise summary, from Elephant in the Brain (a fantastic book which I recently finished and will share insights from shortly):

Compared to their secular counterparts, religious people tend to smoke less, donate and volunteer more, have more social connections, get and stay married more, and have more kids. They also live longer, earn more money, experience less depression, and report greater happiness and fulfillment in their lives.

More findings and excerpts follow…

From the NIH:

Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide.

From Wiley:

We also find that religious attendance at baseline reduces the odds of illicit drug use at follow‐up. Respondents who increased their level of religious attendance over the study period also tended to exhibit a concurrent reduction in the odds of illicit drug use.

More Wiley:

It finds that religious people, members of minority religions, and people in religiously diverse countries were more likely to help a stranger. Individuals living in devout countries were more likely to help strangers even if they themselves were not religious. The results suggest that religion plays a particularly important role in promoting the prosocial norms and values that motivate helping strangers

From Wikipedia:

What Andrew B. Newberg and others “discovered is that intensely focused spiritual contemplation triggers an alteration in the activity of the brain that leads one to perceive transcendent religious experiences as solid, tangible reality. In other words, the sensation that Buddhists call oneness with the universe.”

From the great book Blue Zones.

Healthy centenarians everywhere have faith. The Sardinians and Nicoyans are mostly Catholic. Okinawans have a blended religion that stresses ancestor worship. Loma Linda centenarians are Seventh-day Adventists. Ikarians have traditionally been Greek Orthodox. All belong to strong religious communities. The simple act of worship is one of those subtly powerful habits that seems to improve your chances of having more good years. It doesn’t matter if you are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or Hindu.

From the podcast, Research on Religion:

My notes: Religion offers an extra layer of protection from PTSD for soldiers returning from the battlefield; Why? Possibly, if you’re strongly religious going into war, your community, practice, and faith can be protective and supportive; BUT if you’re only weakly religious, war can shatter those beliefs, and shock you out of faith. You may come back atheist, which is a double whammy where you lose your faith and suffer from this traumatic battlefield experience. The latter happened after WWI in Britain, where many returning soldiers faced nihilism, depression, and suicide

From Harvard epidemiology professor Tyler VanderWeele’s Reddit AMA:

A recent study I led found that women who attended religious services more than once per week were more than 30% less likely to die during a 16-year-follow-up than women who never attended. We found that attending religious services increases social support, discourages smoking, decreases depression, and helps people develop a more optimistic or hopeful outlook on life.

My speculation, though we do not yet have data on this, would be that groups that not only have social gatherings, but also have a shared sense of meaning, healthy behavioral norms, and a common vision for life would have a larger effect on mortality in follow-up than, say, merely showing up for a regular card game. Religious service attendance likely affects health not simply because of social support, but also because it potentially shapes so much of one’s outlook, behavior, beliefs, and one’s sense of life’s meaning and purpose.

In our study on depression, the associations between religious service attendance and subsequent depression were likewise pretty similar for Catholics and Protestants. The one outcome where we found a difference was suicide. The association between religious service attendance and suicide was protective for both Catholics and Protestants but the association was stronger for Catholics. For Protestants those who attended services were about 3-fold less likely to commit suicide; for Catholics, those who attended services were about 20-fold less likely to commit suicide. My guess is that this is the outcome which will vary the most across religious groups.

Interestingly enough, diet quality does seem to be one outcome where religious service attendance is associated with poorer health behavior. Perhaps the church potluck is indeed the culprit. Fried chicken, anyone? ;)

But, yes, with smoking and excessive drinking, religious service attendance is associated with greater likelihood of ceasing these behaviors. I do think people sometimes turn to religion when they are in particularly difficult circumstances.

There have been studies, even randomized trials, of what is sometimes called “intercessory praying” or praying for others. The standard design of these trials is that patients are randomized to receive prayer from someone else; patients themselves, however, are often “blinded” in the sense that they don’t know whether or not they are being prayed for. Some of these randomized trials have suggested an effect of prayer; other studies have suggested no effect; and the research remains controversial. Two reviews that I am aware of have attempted to synthesize all available evidence but they themselves are divided.

From the Journal of Evolutionary Economics.

It is frequently suggested that religion and particularly values associated with religion provide circumstances conducive to entrepreneurial activity (Dodd and Seaman 1998; Henley 2014; Parboteeah et al. 2015). In particular, the work of Weber (1930) is repeatedly cited in this line of reasoning. According to Weber, Protestant Christian values such as ambition, perseverance, and wealth accumulation serve as important motivators for the economic behavior of religious individuals

This is just what I’ve gathered to date. There will be lots more. I’ll probably also do a post on the known / quantified / accepted costs of being religious, too. Stay tuned.

Is the Buddha a god? And other questions from the American Academy of Religion

I was browsing through the American Academy of Religion’s guidelines for how to teach religion in K12 public schools and thought the FAQ section was pretty interesting as a window into how the institutional mind addresses questions about religious belief and practice.

Below are the verbatim questions and my brief paraphrased answers.

The full curriculum guidelines are available here as a PDF.

Why do people still believe in religion?

Science has not made religion obsolete, because religion addresses fundamental questions about ethics and society.

Are religion and science incompatible?

Mostly no, although there are exceptions such as the tension between a subset of Christians and how natural evolution is taught.

Can creation science or intelligent design be taught in schools?

Yes, but not in science classes, and preferably alongside “a diversity of worldviews.”

Does the Bible say that homosexuality is wrong?

Some would say yes. Others would say no.

Do Jews believe in heaven?

Most Jews believe humans have a soul which survives the physical body. Also, “heaven” is mostly a Christian concept.

Did the Jews kill Jesus?

It’s complicated, but Romans and non-Jews were also involved in his death.

Is the Buddha a god?

What do you mean by the word “god”?

Do you have to follow all the rules of a religion to be religious?

Some might say yes. Others would say no.

Is God real?

It’s not a teacher’s place to say.

Is Islam a violent religion?

Blame the media.

I’m Hindu (or Muslim, Christian, Buddhist) and my religion is really different from the Hinduism (or Islam, Christianity, Buddhism) we are studying. Why?

Religion is complicated.

Why do we need to study religion anyway? We’re in school, not church!

“It is impossible to understand human history and culture without understanding its religious dimensions”

For more of my writings on religion and spirituality, here’s a post on why religion is actually growing across the world, and here are some useful definitions of religion.

Notes from 8 TED talks: Samina Ali, Tim Urban, Tom Chi, JJ Abrams, and more

I watched two TED talks on a flight yesterday, and then realized there were some old TED notes that I still hadn’t published. So here they are, in their scattered and collective glory. Some notes are thorough, and others are – at best – just passing scribbles.

Also, here’s my collection of 100+ TED talk notes. I haven’t updated this page in more than a year, but the notes (and talks themselves) are mostly evergreen.

Samina Ali: What Quran says about a Muslim woman’s hijab

  • 600AD – when woman awoke in middle of night, had to walk into dangerous territories to use restroom, group of men began to attack
  • if a woman wore a coat (status symbol) the woman was free and protected by her clan
  • if she dressed freely (didn’t wear a coat), or men knew she was a slave, men attacked her
  • Mohammed learned of situation, turned to God, and his verses were revealed
  • “draw upon yourselves the garments, so that she not be known, and molested”
  • idea was to have a conservative, uniform look among women, to make it hard to distinguish free from slave
  • in modern times, if wearing a veil leads to harassment, then it actually goes against the roots of why veils arose
  • The Qu’ran is 114 chapters and 6000+ verses
  • Only 3 refer to a woman’s dress: the one above, a second specifically about the Prophet’s wives, and a third which is specific to that time’s context – a scarf to wear on the head, which would cover exposed breasts
  • There is no mention of a woman’s veil
  • What “hijab” really means is “a barrier”, “a divide”, between human and divine, or between men and women
  • Women played an important and strong role in early Islamic and Arabic culture
  • Mohammed’s first wife was a successful CEO, import/export, hired Mohammed and eventually she proposed to him
  • His second wife rode into battle
  • Early women demanded to be part of Mohammed’s revolution
  • They even publicly debated with Mohammed himself
  • At that time, custom was for woman to select her husband, propose, and initiate divorce
  • Today, why does hijab = Muslim women, seclusion & isolation?
  • This isn’t an accident
  • Islamic clerics are responsible; they twisted and added words to Mohammed’s original verses (eg, they specified that the garment would be a veil, and exactly how long that veil should be)
  • They issued fatwas = legal rulings
  • Today Muslim women are heavily discriminated against
  • A woman only need finish elementary school
  • A woman must fulfill physical obligation to husband
  • Islam forbids a woman from wearing a bra
  • Sounds erotic, misogynous fantasy

Tom Chi: Everything is connected

  • Story of the Heart – blood transports hemoglobin and center of hemoglobin is iron; only way iron is created is supernovas, stars forming and exploding; most common formation of new stars is galactic collision, which itself is driven by gravity at the galactic level
  • Story of the Breath – 3B years ago, 80% nitrogen, not enough oxygen, but cyanobacteria came to rescue; slowly ozone layer forms, then multicellular life forms, then Cambrian Explosion; cyanobacteria descendants became chloroplasts in plants
  • Story of the Mind – piano invented in 1700; pianists use many parts of their brain to play; the piano, its brain patterns and music it produces, was not a thinkable thought until it was invented; like inventing a new color, like inventing computer science
  • “palette of being”
  • all spiritual positions have this same concept of connectedness

Adam Grant: The surprising habits of original thinkers

  • They’re quick to start, slow to finish
  • There’s a procrastination sweet spot for creativity, not too much, not too little
  • MLK’s famous “I have a dream” line for his speech wasn’t in his speech notes, it was likely improvised!
  • First mover advantage is largely a myth, improvers (followers) have a 5x lower failure rate
  • The opposite of deja vu is vujas de – surprising new idea and insight from seeing some old unoriginal thing in a new light
  • Firefox and Chrome users more creative than IE users, when normalizing for other variables because of one reason: they don’t accept the default (eg, IE comes pre-installed so it’s about questioning what you’re given and making a conscious choice)
  • Classical composers – one of the best predictors of success was sheer quantity of composition, how much output

Yuval Harari: Why humans run the world, a recap of his book Sapiens

  • What enables us to cooperate in such large numbers, and thus what separates us from every other species, is our imagination. Fictional stories from capitalism to religion
  • All about “flexible cooperation in large numbers”
  • Kevin’s note: this is the same as Karen Armstrong’s point that our chief religious faculty is imagination

Here are my highlights from reading Sapiens.

Amy Lockwood: Selling condoms in the Congo

  • The Congo is 2/3 the size of Western Europe
  • Sex workers’ hotel manager doesn’t sell condoms, there’s no demand, only 3% of DRC uses them
  • Despite similar prices and plenty of marketing, people don’t buy branded condoms, only generic
  • Branded messages: FEAR, FINANCING, FIDELITY
  • Generic messages: all about sex, nudity / sexuality, provocative, aspirational

JJ Abrams: The Mystery Box

  • Loved his grandfather who opened and studied electronics
  • Obsessed with letter printing and book binding
  • Loves boxes, even took apart his hotel’s Kleenex box
  • Was gifted a Super 8 camera at 10 years old
  • Bought Tannen’s Mystery Magic Box a long time ago, never opened it, memory of his grandfather
  • Damon Lindelof and him created Lost, had 11 weeks after writing to making a 2 hour pilot
  • What are stories but mystery boxes?
  • In TV the first act is called the teaser: “withholding information intentionally”
  • ET: you think it’s alien meets kids; but ET is really about heartbreaking divorce, same with Die Hard
  • Jaws: really about a guy dealing with his place in the world
  • Father to son: “C’mon…give us a kiss”. “Why?”. “Because I need it.”
  • The movie theater is another mystery box

Tim Urban: Inside the mind of a master procrastinator

  • Wrote a 90 page senior thesis in 3 days – was a terrible experience
  • Started waitbutwhy
  • Wrote about procrastination because it confused him
  • The Instant Gratification Monkey only cares about 2 things: what’s EASY and FUN
  • Dark playground – where leisure happens when it shouldn’t happen
  • Procrastinator has a guardian angel: The Panic Monster
  • The Panic Monster lies dormant until a deadline, or embarrassment, or career disaster
  • Everyone’s a procrastinator
  • The Monkey’s sneakiest trick is when the deadline isn’t there
  • “frustration isn’t that you’re not able to achieve your dreams, it’s that you’re not even able to start chasing them”

Tony Fadell: The first secret of great design

  • Steve Jobs hated when you opened a new gadget, and then you had to charge it before using
  • So he increased manufacturing time from 30 minutes to 2 hours to fully charge the battery so that when a customer opened the box, the gadget was ready to use
  • Habituation is incredibly powerful, but also because of it, you miss great opportunities
  • Built a custom screw for the Nest thermostat; it’s expensive, but easier to install on the wall
  • “Think younger”, kids haven’t been around long enough to be exposed to habits
  • “Stay beginners”

Patimokkha: The 227 rules for male monks and 311 rules for female monks

Most established religions have a codified and often comprehensive list of rules, and Buddhism is no exception.

For Theravada Buddhists, that list is the Patimokkha, itself part of a larger text called the Suttavibhanga. The rules are largely based on what the Buddha himself said and did in his life, but the actual writing down of these rules was done by his followers shortly after his death in 483 BC. So this document, the Patimokkha, is 2,500 years old. It helps to keep the age in mind as you read through the full list.

I wanted to share some thoughts as I study the rules and their context.

For starters there are 227 rules for male monks (bhikkhus) and 311 rules for female monks (bhikkhunis). Here are 110 rules specifically for bhikkhunis. There are differing interpretations as to why women have more rules to follow than men, as you can read here. The top reasons seem to be:

1. Bhikkhuni ordination rules are counted in the Patimokkha, but bhikkhu rules are not (why, I don’t know)

2. Extra rules were added to prevent abuse of power by bhikkhus, and to prevent conflicts that arose specifically among bhikkhunis

But largely the rules are the same and are in line with Buddhism’s precepts.

For example, there are 30 rules to encourage you to own less and acquire less, among them:

Accepting gold or money, having someone else accept it, or consenting to its being placed down as a gift for oneself, is a nissaggiya pācittiya offense. (NP 18)

Obtaining gold or money through trade is a nissaggiya pācittiya offense. (NP 19)

There are 75 rules for proper training, for example, how to wear your robe, when not to laugh, how to eat your food. And 7 rules that amount to a sort of legal code among monks.

The Patimokkha also seems quite focused, in training, on how to control your body and physical behavior, especially in public:

I will go [sit] with eyes lowered in inhabited areas: a training to be observed.

I will not go [sit] swinging my arms in inhabited areas: a training to be observed.

I will not go tiptoeing or walking just on the heels in inhabited areas: a training to be observed.

And of course there are some head scratchers and funny ones, when taken out of historical and cultural context. Again, a bhikkhuni is a female monk, a nun:

Should any bhikkhunī, lusting, consent to a lusting man’s taking hold of her hand or touching the edge of her outer robe, or should she stand with him or converse with him or go to a rendezvous with him, or should she consent to his approaching her, or should she enter a hidden place with him, or should she dispose her body to him (any of these) for the purpose of that unrighteous act (Comm: physical contact) then she also is defeated and no longer in affiliation for “(any of) eight grounds.”

Should any bhikkhunī eat garlic, it is to be confessed.

Should any bhikkhunī do a chore for a lay person, it is to be confessed.

That last one I’m particularly curious about, and will further research. If anyone has the answer, please let me know.

The rules have differing levels of importance, and punishments vary accordingly. For example, stealing is grounds for expulsion from the community. Lesser rules when violated can result in probation, in public reprimand, in private penance, and so on.

Finally, not only is killing perhaps the most serious offense a monk can commit, but even talking about death in a positive manner is comparably bad:

“praise the advantages of death, or incite him to die (saying,): “My good man, what use is this evil, miserable life to you? Death would be better for you than life,” or with such an idea in mind, such a purpose in mind, should in various ways praise the advantages of death or incite him to die, he also is defeated and no longer in affiliation.”

Sources, if not linked above:

  • http://en.dhammadana.org/sangha/vinaya/227.htm
  • https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/vin/sv/bhikkhu-pati.html#pr
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patimokkha

Thanks for reading! I’m spending a lot of time these days studying organized religions, as I believe they’re a source of wisdom and stories. Here’s a post about how religion helps you build good habits, and here’s a post about why I believe religion will be around much longer than all the modern technologies we obsess over today.

A couple Google search trends on religion and spirituality

Just putzing around with the Google trends tool and wanted to share a few charts.

So in the US, people search for the word “God” quite a bit more than soul, religion, and faith. Interestingly it’s also the only word growing in search popularity.

“Islam” is leading in search popularity in the US, by a wide-ish margin. Then Christianity, then Buddhism, then a virtual tie between Hinduism and Judaism.

Worldwide, it’s not even close. “Islam” wins by a huge margin. There are many caveats here, starting with the fact that these are results for English language searches only. The caveats become obvious in the next chart:

Because “Jesus” is the clear leader. I tried different spellings of Muhammad as well. What caused that spike for “Muhammad” (red line) in mid-2016?

And finally, worldwide, “yoga” is growing by leaps. Meditation and prayer comparatively steady.